Romance XI: Erotic Romance, Erotica, and the Erotics of Vulnerability

Romance XI: Erotic Romance, Erotica, and the Erotics of Vulnerability

I will do two things in this presentation. First, I will offer a
theory of romance that pays attention to its narrative preoccupations
rather than its formal elements. In this presentation I am interested in
romance fiction’s narrative preoccupation with the erotics of
vulnerability. My theory of the erotics of vulnerability builds on Audre
Lorde's "Uses of the Erotic" and Brene Brown's research on
vulnerability. The second, and more important, thing I plan to do in
this presentation is attempt to re-focus our critical attention on
African American romance, which typically gets scant attention in
romance scholarship. I will argue that romance fiction’s attention to
the erotics of vulnerability sets the stage for the radical
possibilities of black romance.

I will offer two brief readings to illustrate my argument. The first will focus on the Beverly Jenkins historical Something Like Love,
in which the characters find themselves subject to myriad political,
social, and sexual vulnerabilities and must learn the reward (and
erotics) of risk. The second will focus on Maureen Smith's contemporary Recipe for Temptation.
The characters in this novel are largely free of the kind of
vulnerability that plagues the heroine and hero of Jenkins' novel (the
racial landscape of 19th century and 21st century American are quite
different). Yet these characters still exist in a world that posits
black intimacy and sexuality, and the resulting vulnerability, as
necessarily sites of profound and persistent degradation, humiliation,
and oppression. Like Jenkins, Smith uses genre romance to de-center what
I call narratives of despair and re-narrate black pleasure and desire.

Climax and Consent: The Emancipatory Potential of Erotica in Popular Romance Fiction

I have argued elsewhere that female sexual pleasure is central to the
broad romance narrative and that the romance genre can be powerfully
sex-positive (Roach, forthcoming 2015). However, the erotic content in
romance fiction, as is true of erotica in general, can serve to
endlessly reproduce tired old stereotypes and oppressive master
narratives. The new wave of feminist and queer pornography proves that
erotica can be a radical imaginative space of exploration and
possibility; erotica can be a descriptive and prescriptive narrative for
how sexuality can be lived for partners’ mutual pleasure, support, and
emancipation. How can the erotic aspect of romance story-telling reach
this full potential for sex-positive, queer-friendly, feminist
liberation? What might such erotic content in the romance genre look
like? In this presentation, I explore these questions by focusing on
two aspects of sexual relationship: consent and climax.
In the romance storyline, partners agree to engage in sexual activity
(consent) and enjoy such activity (climax)—if not immediately, then by
the story’s end; if not explicitly on-page, then implicitly off-page.
(The new asexuality movement represents an interesting counter-argument
that I briefly pursue.) The point about consent can be summarized as
“the problem of the bodice ripper.” Much discussion about romance
fiction, both popular and academic/critical, has viewed as problematic
“old school” scenes of non-consensual sex between main characters
destined for true love. I suggest that non-consensual sex has not gone
away. Contemporary BDSM romances represent a current form of the
earlier bodice-ripper, a more politically correct version wherein
partners negotiate consent in advance before engaging in scenes of force
and bondage. More widely, many romances grant such masterful powers of
seduction to the hero that sex scenes are rape-like: the heroine’s
initial “no” yields to “yes” in the hero’s magical embrace. I argue the
genre stages non-fully-consensual sex scenes to create a collective,
woman-oriented imaginative space to work through complicated problems of
assault, rape, consent, will, agency, and desire in sex. The second
problem of climax can be summarized, to borrow Wendell and Tan’s terms,
as the problem of the hero’s “Wang of Mighty Lovin’” and the heroine’s
“Magic Hoo Hoo.” In short, women (and men) do not climax from
intercourse in real life as easily and as often, with such pleasure and
life-changing consequences, as in romance fiction. The point isn’t that
sex needs to be realistic, but that it could be more varied and more in
line with typical patterns of female sexual response. The erotic in
romance, as in wider media, could get beyond master narratives centered
around penetrative, genital, orgasmic sexuality in order to realize the
full goals of sex-positive culture.

The Lexicon of Love: An Analysis of Sexual Language in Lesbian Romance and Erotica

Until the last few decades, graphic sex scenes were uncommon in
lesbian romance. In many instances the consummation of the love
relationship occurred off-stage or was couched in euphemistic terms.
Explicit depictions of sex between women was most often reserved for
erotica, creating a divide in the form of sexual expression between
romance and erotica and reinforcing the expectation of readers that
“sex,” at least the sweaty, unbridled, wild kind, was not part of
“romance” fiction. This parallels observations in non-same-sex romance
as noted in a recent blog by Jane Little: “Prior to 2000, references to
the penis would often be couched in terms such as “manroot” “stalk” and
“pleasure rod”. The clitoris or vagina would be known in equally obscure
terms. Now it’s not uncommon to see the use of “cock”, “cunt”, or
“pussy” within many mainstream romances whether they be historical,
contemporary or paranormal. Today the line between erotic romance and
non erotic romance appears blurred, not just for readers but authors and
publishers as well.” (1)

In the last decade, a merging of the erotic and romantic has become
more common within the expanding field of lesbian romance. Erotic
romance is recognized as a subgenre by authors and publishers and sought
after by readers. This study looks at variations in sexual language
usage in two different populations of contemporary lesbian romance
novels: 1) romances written by self-identified erotic romance authors
versus “sweet” romance authors, and 2) sex scenes written by authors who
write both lesbian erotica and romance (thereby serving as their own
controls in terms of language choices). Sex scenes are analyzed and
compared by word count/phrase for pre-selected terms commonly associated
with genitalia or descriptors of intercourse/sexual intimacy to
determine the differences if any in sexual language based on genre
dictates.

The romance novel has become increasingly erotic, but few mainstream
publishers stray into the upper stratum of eroticism. The mid-range,
four-to-six level of eroticism, is where the heroines of mainstream
romances tend to find love. Some novels may venture into seven-level
eroticism, but few step into the upper eight-to-ten level of the xrotic,
where sexual escapades are graphically depicted and often occur outside
a committed relationship; it is also, more-often-than-not, with
multiple partners over the course of the novel. It is obvious that
mainstream publishers are not meeting the need of romance readers since
their failure to depict sexual activity in any detail has given birth to
a flourishing cottage industry of small digital xrotic publishers.
This paper explores the growth of these small presses in an attempt to
explain their success and why mainstream publishers have failed to
respond to the desire for the xrotica.